


Fiddly Mortal Bits

by bitterestApoplexia (Twilit)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, If You Are Playing Sburb, Read This If You Want Some Reassurance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-01
Updated: 2013-04-01
Packaged: 2017-12-07 04:53:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/744465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twilit/pseuds/bitterestApoplexia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Aging, Meta-Knowledge and the desperate scrabbling for a sense of Self in the multiverse's most sadistic game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fiddly Mortal Bits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GodsGiftToGrinds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodsGiftToGrinds/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Sburb Glitch FAQ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/340777) by [GodsGiftToGrinds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodsGiftToGrinds/pseuds/GodsGiftToGrinds). 



Hello. I'm bitterestApoplexia and GGTG has kindly allowed me to contribute to his massive, and I believe much-needed, SBURB FAQ. Let's be honest, it's moved beyond just a Glitch FAQ, to its credit. Following the apparent method of introduction de jour, I am a native Hope player, but I have experience in or with most of the Titles and Aspects (though I have yet to encounter a Rain or Mist player (and quite frankly hope I never do)). 

But let's begin with this guest chapter in earnest. I am sure you are wondering what the hell I'm talking about when I say "Fiddly Mortal Bits." I am working off the premise that we as players are no longer what you could call entirely mortal anymore. SBURB really does give you some manner of life after death and dying wouldn't be everybody's favorite hobby if we couldn't do it more than once, hmm?

So I propose that for the most part, our lives, our existence is a kind of game object, else how would the game be able to bring us back over and over again? However, cogito ergo sum still applies, so there must be something mortal, something that makes us Players, left to us. This chapter will deal with some of those things that I call Fiddly Mortal Bits, namely [AGING], [META-KNOWLEDGE] and [SELF]. I apologize for my wordiness, I am really trying to work on it, but this chapter will necessitate a bit more background and discussion of the metagame. So less of those delightful text boxes and more wordvomit. Fair Warning. (I have also been instructed by some of my peers that I should warn you that I am a "ponce" and a "jackass" (the assholes))

\--

** Aging **

Alright, this shouldn't be much of a spoiler since presumably you've gone over the important parts of GGTG's guide, but in case you haven't [END GAME SPOILERS BELOW].

After you claim the Ultimate Letdown, you get to replay this gibbering nighmarish hell-sent CLUSTERFUCK that we laughably refer to as a FUCKING GAME. But oh look! Everything gets reset. Yes, EVERYTHING (well, alright, almost everything (everything that let you survive the first bloody time around at least)). As you undoubtably know by now, you roll a new Title and Aspect, taking over some poor failed soul's spot in a session. And all your hard work goes down the drain. Stats, songs, even some of that vaunted maturity (however the hell that works). On the other hand, you get a few new lives, some cool new powers to explore and a nicely refurbished body.

Now, how refurbished is this body? You know that your maturity resets (and no, if that mind-wiping concept terrifies you, you are not alone (SBURB is a cock, shocking, I know)), but did you know that your age does as well? It does, at least, a little. One thing the replay community has found out, through dangerous and ill-advised examination of the code no doubt, is that when you enter the Medium a template of your body is made. This is how you, your dreamself(ves), your Earthsea Borealis dickwad and your doppelganger are incorporated as game objects. Now, most games of SBURB take about 9-36 months to beat (assuming you even manage to). Your body is aging all through that, diverging from the template. So when you select REPLAY (you poor, sorry, star-crossed fool (it's not like you had any choice, really)) the game loads that template again.

Hurrah! Eternal youth! A world free from the cares of aging! Forever young! Forever... (most likely, according to statistics and demographics (though I once played a game with a six year old)) a teenager. 

I will give you a moment to dwell on that.

 

You may now begin swearing profusely

 

 

Done? Wonderful. Also: I lied. You're not a teenager forever. See, it was discovered that, for some reason, the template itself ages. Some code-monkeys think its because it is checking it's creation timestamp against some kind of multi-universal meta-clock. Whatever the reason, it ages incredibly slowly (implying that multi-universal time moves at a much slower rate than we do (or that we are actually trapped in some kind of artificial processor that can simulate running time faster than reality)). So when you replay, your body resets to this younger self. Rather than suffering an eternity as a teenager, you merely get to suffer much, much longer as one. It gets better eventually.

There are some upsides to this de-maturitization process (good lord I really have been playing this game for far too long). Namely, even though you go back to a body that is still pretty incompetent at handling all of those wonderful (read: terrible) new chemicals running through it, you are equipped with the knowledge of how to deal with them. So even though your emotions are scattered all over the place like so much birdseed again, you can reign them in more easily. Essentially, even though your physical and emotional maturity is reset, your mental maturity remains your own to exercise as you see fit. This comes into play again further on.

The downsides are obvious though. I had the good fortune to be assigned to my second game ever with a peer from my first and immediately upon spawning she started swearing at me through our client because the cramps she'd thought had lessened a year ago were back and happily kicking her ass. We started when we were fifteen and I'd finally started growing "like whoa" so being shrunk back down in every aspect of my dimensions was irritating to say the least. Also, pimples. Fuck pimples. 

In any case, after what I estimate to be about 75 years of play across twenty-odd sessions (alright look, at one point all of the players in a session rolled Time for their Aspects and there was such goddamn reeking, pointless PILE of ASSDRIPPING SISTERFUCKING TIME BULLSHIT we had to sort out before even getting to the Reckoning I don't actually know how long that session went, but I was starting to FUCKING GO GREY) I look like I'm in my late teens, early twenties.

So you're thinking to yourself "fascinating stuff but why should I care?" Because, in case you haven't noticed, SBURB is a young person's game. Since your template is a bloody fucking accurate copy of your genetic code, it retains those mildly inconvenient markers that start to decay your body over time. Granted, you will likely die a far messier death prior to it, but it is still possible to die of old age. So the more you survive this game, the more careful you will have to be (don't worry, statistics say you will die long before this becomes an issue (usually)).

Apparently (and I don't know how accurate this story is (it's third-hand)) a group of players once encountered an old man as one of their replacement players. A full shock of white hair, wrinkly skin, the whole deal. And he's been playing SBURB since he was twelve years old. The man had CENTURIES of play time behind him. And still that meant nothing when he died. Apparently he was chatting as his dreamself in a group meeting, when POP! He disappears. The group then quite naturally figured he'd woken up. When they couldn't reach him over their client, they consulted his Land. By the time they got there, all was dark and empty. They found him in his bed, on his Spire, all tucked in. Dead as a doornail. And part that still affects me (I mean really I can't tell if I'm scared or what, but my heart beats faster and goosebumps break out) is that when they found him, he had the most peaceful smile on his face, like he'd finally found true rest.

The group would probably never had survived SBURB were it not for the knowledge that this man brought with him, so that leads me quite neatly to my next section.

\--

** Meta-Knowledge **

Forget Berserk Triggers, forget strife specibi, forget fraymotifs. [KNOWLEDGE] is the most powerful tool you have at your disposal in this game (I would apologize for the cliche but I won't (No really, sit up and pay a-fucking-ttention).Its power comes quite simply from that fact that it will keep you (and your team) alive for slightly longer. It is also free to pick up and pass around. If you are a veteran player, you should be teaching "Sboobs" everything you can. If you are not, you should be learning whatever you can, whenever you can (and actually, veterans that bloody well applies to you too). Eyes, ears and minds open people.

When you reset, just about everything you accomplished in your previous game gets erased. But what you bring forward 100% of the time is what you have learned. And this knowledge "stacks" in that the more you understand the game, the more you understand how it is going to try to kill you next (though it is still up to you to avoid that). Despite the procedurally-generated nature of SBURB, there is still a great deal of general knowledge and understanding that you can bring forward with you. Let's call this particular brand of information [META-KNOWLEDGE]. 

This FAQ alone will make you hundreds of times more like to survive (just please be aware that your odds are still depressing ("kids and fun" indeed)). Reading up on FAQs like this and others will give those of you new to this game a significant edge. Anything from learning about as many strife specibi as possible (just because you are limited to 3 or 4 doesn't mean you can't learn their operation so that you can fight more effectively alongside other people (also, so that you're not so surprised when someone whips out fancysantakind that an imp shanks you)) to learning more musical instruments (which is useful when you can't find, say, a guitar on your land (can you whistle? learn to whistle)) is fair game.

Actually, let's use learning to whistle as an example. By managing to do that, you're stripping yourself of a dependency on the game which SBURB might very well use to kill you. I am not even remotely joking. I have seen two players in two separate games go "My, what a lovely instrument! I shall pick it up!" In one case the fucking ceiling fell on them and in the other it was cursed and the player couldn't use their strife specibus for the rest of the game. So, do try to cultivate things like that, which we can call [META-SKILLS]. Learning to dance is another good skill to pick up, because fraymotifs. If you can't quite get the hang of these things, ask other players to help. Many of them will be much better at some kinds of [META-SKILLS] than you and though there's no game mechanic or stat to track your progress, you will still learn from them if they teach you (at some point I should compile a list of useful [META-SKILLS] (and maybe some players with real skill at them)).

Which brings me back to a point I made earlier. Share in-game knowledge and [META-KNOWLEDGE]. Bring it up with your session leader that your team should meet regularly, update one another and share anything new they've learned. This should start with one big meeting where any veterans give any new players a massive primer. Link them to this FAQ beforehand. 

Side note: It may not be advisable to inform players that they cannot win or ever get out of the game. In my experience, this sometimes leads to a higher rate of mental illness and lower general morale. On the other hand, it may be unavoidable on account of your very existence in their game and the virtual necessity of reading the FAQ.

While some titles may suffer penalties for sharing or acting for the group instead of yourself, this _does not_ apply to  [META-KNOWLEDGE] or [META-SKILLS]. So a Mage does not necessarily need to be an irritating, obfuscating, prophecy-spewing DOUCHEBAG to tell people not to try to kill their BLOODY FUCKING DENIZEN (though perhaps it will increase their roleplay co-efficient (I'd investigate this further but I don't suffer from similarities to vaginal care products), but is that really worth losing an entire player? (the answer is no)). 

What you will have to do, while sharing all of this wondrous information, is make it clear to anyone who hasn't figured it out yet that despite [KNOWLEDGE] being [POWER] SBURB is still a cock. Just because you can recognize an Atomyk Ebonpyre does not mean that an imp can't spawn right next to you while you've looked away for two seconds and shank you. The fact is that all this [META-KNOWLEDGE] will only ever slightly raise your chances of surviving a game out to complete the genocide of your people (oh alright and write you your very own Bildungsroman (in your own blood and tears)).

But every little bit helps.

Side Note: Particularly bright, gamebreaking folk among you will inevitably try to memorize the Capcha of, say, a moon-shattering rifle and try to bring that into a new session. This does not work. Capcha codes of procedurally generated objects are also procedurally generated and do not carry over from session to session. An irritating bit of redundancy, but as I'm sure you've noticed, SBURB's very code is a cock. So there you have it, there is no way to bring an item from one session to another (alas, because I hate constantly having to try and figure out how to make After Eights (the minty chocolates, not the specibus)).

EDIT: Alright, apparently there IS a way to bring items from one session to another and it has to do with those truly fucked up scratched sessions where you physically travel from one session to another. Hell if I know how you're supposed to do that and it's not like you would be able to bring very much with you (short of, I don't know, surfing a battleship through a fenestrated plane (or firing a meteor through the Furthest Ring with psychic powers (alright, I'll stop there, I apologize, too many After Eights and I'm getting somewhat manic))).

\--

** Self **

So between all of this talk of resets and [META-KNOWLEDGE] and [META-SKILLS], you might be wondering what part of you is still you when all's said and done. That's also a part of what this guide is trying to help with. I am personally of the opinion that who you are, your [SELF], is solely consistent of your conscious, ever-changing mind (which means that I am exceptionally fucking terrified of all the mental fuckery SBURB gets up to with resetting your maturity, artificial mental illnesses and whatnot (AND NO I DON'T CARE THAT IT'S NOT PERMANENT FUCK RIGHT OFF)).

Your [SELF], the one that travels between sessions is that which SBURB can least affect, that which is most yours. It is probably the most important of all your Mortal Fiddly Bits because of this. I don't hold to the idea of a soul (and honestly, anyone who can still cling to anything remotely religious in this game has my utmost respect (because if you've played SBURB and think there's something resembling a purpose in life you have the kind of faith that CREATES religions)) but your [SELF] is probably the closest thing you're going to have to it. When SBURB inevitably starts ripping things out of your life, such as your family, friends, various parts of your body, even parts of your [SELF] (helllloooo mindfuckery), you can still cling to that tattered [SELF] because it is the product of everything you do and are.

This is particularly important when dealing with the kind of journey that assuming a new Title and Aspect puts you through. You are likely familiar with the idea that these things are designed to make you face your flaws. When you hit a new session, are you assuming someone else's flaws? Thanks to the extreme vagary of the game's FUCKING BULLSHIT CLASS SYSTEM and the ever mutable nature of your [SELF], the answer is essentially no. What, you thought you only had one set of flaws? Did you think that you can't develop more and different flaws as time goes on? Believe you me, I know you can. Some of my hardest games were as an active class after a spree of passive games or vice-versa. "Be decisive! You are important as a person as well!" Or as an Inheritor after a Tactician. "No, you are the solution to the problem, not the one who plans that solution." So SBURB isn't making you take on someone else's problems or become someone else (so very kind of it). 

It is also demonstrably not forcing a completely new and alien set of flaws on you. There are likely hundreds, thousands if not millions of failed sessions. The sad fact of the matter is that only 7% of players make it into the Medium. Since it has all of those sessions to choose from, SBURB has a plentiful palette of generated Titles and Aspects to suit your given flaws. The only reason it isn't a complete cock and pops you in a session that doesn't suit your capabilities or progression is because it is much more efficient to align your transportation with something that you have some affinity for, even if that affinity is a set of newly spawn flaws. But go through enough of these journeys and you are going to be asking the question "Who am I really?"

It is a difficult question to answer. Certainly, I'm not that semi-willing Mage of Hope who stumbled through his first session (but then, some poor depressed soul looks at me in a certain way and then I think, maybe I am). But then, change is a natural part of life, whether that life is in a half-assed, homicidal virtual construct bent on WARPING YOUR VERY PERCEPTION or in a world untouched by SBURB. Consider an old man - is he the same person who he was when he graduated high school? The changes are incremental, but they are there. In SBURB, the differences in before and after (a binary that really doesn't apply (think more of a gradient stretching across all of your playthroughs)) are merely starker. In a way, your [SELF] is the product of all your minute changes. 

Essentially every change, every reversal, every loss can only ever add to or change your [SELF]. SBURB has NO power to take away your [SELF]. It has been yours since before you entered the Medium and no matter how many templates you get inserted into, how much [META-KNOWLEDGE] you accumulate, how many Revelawesomes crack you over the head, your [SELF] is and always be yours (or really, you). No, you are not the person you were, but without them as the base, the changes who made you who you are could not have come to pass.

So when you're looking in the mirror and wondering what the point of it all is, feeling lost and lonely and hating this game for everything it put you through, remember that there's always that little Fiddly Mortal Bit that SBURB can never have: your [SELF]. So cling to it tightly when things are at their worst and tell SBURB to sit on a fence and rotate because it's never taking that from you.

\--

Thank you for reading. I hope this little FAQ helps get some ideas through to you about your on-going meta-existence and takes some of the weight off of you in your journeys. I find that when you're busy spinning moons around like flails to take out the skull of a giant floating chess piece, it helps to remember that there are still bit of you that are mortal. 

bitterestApoplexia, signing off.


End file.
